[5] Because the symptoms developed in adulthood (as is common with the disorder), the disfigurement was incorrectly attributed later by film studio publicity departments to elephantiasis resulting from exposure to a German mustard gas attack during service in World War I.

Director Henry King noticed Hatton when he was working as a reporter with The Tampa Tribune covering the filming of Hell Harbor (1930) and hired him for a small role.

His most notable of these was as a contestant-extra in the "ugly man competition" (which he loses to a heavily made-up Charles Laughton) in the RKO production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

[11] As the artist Brian Bolland revealed in an interview with David Bishop: "The picture of Dredd's face – that was a 1940s actor called Rondo Hatton.

In the 2004 Stephen King novel, The Dark Tower VII, a character is described as looking "like Rondo Hatton, a film actor from the 1930s, who suffered from acromegaly and got work playing monsters and psychopaths".

In the 1991 movie The Rocketeer, actor Tiny Ron Taylor, playing Nazi henchman Lothar, is made up with prosthetics to look like Hatton.

The episode of Doctor Who entitled "The Wedding of River Song" features Mark Gatiss as a character whose appearance (achieved through prosthetics) is based on Hatton's, credited under the pseudonym Rondo Haxton for his performance.

[17] The Dark Horse comic The Creep focuses on Oxel Karnhus, a private detective with acromegaly, who was modelled after Hatton and his "Creeper" character.